More than 1 in 10 (12%) of US adults are now using Pinterest, but nearly 20% of women are on the site, according to a new report.
The study, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, examined the habits of more than one thousand American adults.
It indicates that while 19% of women are using the site, just 5% of online men are on Pinterest.
Pinterest lets users organise and share content from around the web by “pinning” photos and images into “pinboards” that are organised by categories or themes. Each “pin”, which includes a caption, links back to the site from which it originated.
The survey found that Pinterest is most popular among women between the ages of 18 and 29, those with some college education, and those with an annual household income of $50,000—$75,000.
The survey also found that women are more likely than men to post images that they’ve created themselves or found online.
Some 47% of women and 43% of men said they’ve shared photos they’ve created themselves online, while 40% of women and 31% of men said they’ve shared images they’ve found online.
“It is usually the case that people gravitate to services that match their interests and their needs.
Some of the more popular subjects on Pinterest are likely to be especially interesting to women, such as food, fashion, interior decorating and design,” said Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and co-author of the study.
Demographics on other social media sites
To put Pinterest’s user base into perspective, Pew researchers found that 66% of U.S. adults are on Facebook, 20% are on LinkedIn, and 16% are on Twitter.
Pinterest has surpassed Tumblr, which is used by 5% of U.S. adults. Instagram has also developed a sizable user base, with 12% of all adults now using the mobile photo-sharing app.
On all the other social sites researchers studied, the breakdown between male and female users was fairly evenly divided, with slightly more men than women using Twitter and LinkedIn, while slightly more women than men use Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram.
Creators Vs Currators
The study went on to look at the concept of creators and curators on the internet, indicating that 46% of adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created- dubbed ‘creators’ in the report.
By contrast, just 41% of adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and repost them on sites designed for sharing images with many people (‘curators’)
The creator group is made up of those who have shared photos they have taken themselves (45% of internet users have done that) and those who have shared videos they have created themselves (18% of internet users have done that).
If a person did either one of those two activities—and many do both of them—that person was considered an online image creator.
The curator group is made up of those who have taken photos they found online and posted them on a site that is used for sharing images with others (35% of internet users have done that) and those who have taken videos they found online and posted them on a video-sharing site that is used for sharing videos with others (25% of internet users have done that). If a person did either of those two activities— and a number do both of them— that person was considered an online image curator.
Overall, 56% of internet users do at least one of these creating or curating activities and 32% of internet users do both creating and curating activities.
Methodology
A nationally representative phone survey of 1,005 adults (ages 18+) was taken August 2-5, 2012. It was conducted in English on landline and cell phones. The sample contained 799 internet users, who were asked questions about their online activities. The margin of error for the full sample is ± 3.7 percentage points. The margin of error for the internet sample is ±3.8 percentage points.
View the report here
